Sidetracked

It's 5:37 p.m. on a Wednesday at Union Station. The after-work train back to Boston is leaving in one minute, and would-be riders are scrambling to make it. If the train runs as scheduled, it's really the last opportunity for so-called "reverse commuters" to get back to their bedroom communities or Boston at a decent hour: It's scheduled to arrive at South Station at 6:59 by way of a dozen stops, if there aren't delays. It's convenient, as long as convenient means leaving work exactly at 5 p.m. and getting to the station within 37 minutes. And if you miss the train back home? Tell the family not to hold dinner. The next ride out doesn't leave until 7:40 p.m., doesn't make any stops between Framingham and Boston, and doesn't get into South Station until 8:53 p.m.

This is how we attract people to make the reverse commute to Worcester?

Saying that the Worcester/Framingham commuter rail service needs fixing is like pointing out that the Common Fashion Outlets didn't quite work out the way people had hoped. There aren't enough trains. They're scheduled at unusable, inflexible times for normal people. (A midday train to Boston? 2 p.m. or nothing. A midday return from Boston? Forget it.) And when they are scheduled, the timeliness and reliability of the trains are unpredictable at best. Commuters going in both directions suffer, and potential riders are driven to either buses or cars.

Take commuter Silvio Medina. He calls commuter rail his "first preference," but knows the bus schedule by heart out of necessity. After missing the 8:16 to Boston on a recent morning, he immediately made his way downstairs to the Peter Pan terminal to catch the next bus. "When you have to deal with schedules that are unreliable, people become discouraged," he says.

And that's during normal weekday service. Weekends are even more notorious, with just two daytime trains (and five total) from Worcester to Boston on Saturdays and Sundays. Adding another layer of potential rider frustration, the MBTA announced last month that all trains on the Worcester/Framingham line would experience delays of at least 15 minutes between Sept. 9 and Oct. 4 — the result of the second major project on the line this year.

But there's a flip side: There's never been a better chance than now for Worcester and the rest of Central Massachusetts to see improved commuter rail service. Our former mayor, Timothy Murray, a huge proponent of more trains and better service since his days as a city councilor, is now lieutenant governor and a sort-of commuter rail point person in a state administration dedicated to improving service statewide. One of our state senators (Harriette Chandler) is the vice-chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, and Leominster state Rep. Jennifer Flanagan sits on the same committee on the House side.

In other words, on paper, it looks like now is the best opportunity we're going to have if we ever want more trains.

"I do believe there is a collective will to do this now in the legislative and executive branches," Lt. Gov. Murray commented recently.

Understandably, however, not everyone is quite as positive about the immediate future.

"At this point it's been moving quickly for two years, for three years, for four years," says Chandler.

She has a good point. We seem to have been stuck at this too-familiar crossing for years. The long-advocated commuter rail link between Worcester and Boston didn't even begin until 1995; and it wasn't until 2001 that we finally achieved the original definition of "full service" — the 10-trains-per-day weekday schedule we have now. It's a far cry from the station's heyday. A 1948 book comemorating Worcester's centennial cites 43 daily trains. A 1909 brochure touts 162 passenger trains running every day. Taking advantage of one of Worcester's few MBTA commuter trains.

In 2005, we ran an editorial that depicted a similar situation to today's. Replace a few names, and little has changed:

Former Gov. and Amtrak head Michael Dukakis disembarked at Union Station the other day sputtering about the need for increased service — met on the platform by city Mayor Tim Murray, who agreed with him in spades. Murray has met with new state transportation chief John Cogliano, who has assured him that the issue has his attention. Gov. Mitt Romney is reportedly "on board' with the issue. Our congressional delegation is unanimously supportive. Millions of dollars have been earmarked in the state transportation bond bill for commuter rail improvement, and all of the state's relentless rhetoric about smart growth could not point more strongly to the need to increase service. How can we not get traction on this issue?

It is as good a question today as it was then. For his part, Murray has spoken often and frankly in these pages about his strong desire and push to get more trains to Central Massachusetts. Early this year, he told Worcester Magazine that he hoped to see at least a couple more trains in the near future, and sounded optimistic about the prospect. And last month he told The Boston Globe that "There is an urgency to it, and it's something that is a priority within the administration."

So, once again, how can we not get traction on this issue?

The players

There are several hurdles that must be overcome — not surprising for a transportation arrangement that includes several acronymed agencies and companies. There's CSX, the owner of the tracks between Worcester and Framingham. Then there's the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority), the state agency in charge of commuter rail and the T. They contract out the operation of the trains and service to the MBCR (Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company), a consortium started by former MBTA employees. And that's to say nothing of the state's EOT (Executive Office of Transportation).

It's a situation where everyone involved knows that service is inadequate — and is quick to point a finger. In July 2006, MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas — who has faced some criticism himself for poor service — put the blame for the system's bad performance squarely on MBCR, telling the Globe, "I have no explanation which satisfies me why performance has been on a steep decline for the last several months.

"I'm very disappointed that it's not just the maintenance of the equipment, but also the conduct of MBCR personnel to go above and beyond and meet our customers' expectations," he continued. "I score their performance very low in this crisis." A month after his comments, Paul Lundberg, the MBCR head at the time, resigned under pressure. He was immediately replaced by James O'Leary, a former MBTA general manager.

MBCR, in turn, has placed responsibility for the poor service on the Worcester/Framingham line solely back on CSX, stating that the company has, among other things, maintained the tracks to a freight standard, rather than commuter standards, a difference that results in slower trains.

The big problem

There is one hurdle that, if cleared, could mean a vast improvement in service to all the Central Massachusetts communities on the Worcester/Framingham line — the ownership of the tracks themselves.

The problem is that, as in 2005, when Dukakis came to Union Station, negotiations appear to be sidetracked on this issue. We are still "stuck here with no resolution ... to the purchase of the CSX rail," Sen. Chandler comments.

It's a pesky problem, to say the least. CSX, the only non-MBTA organization to own commuter rail track in the system, has held off on making major accommodations to open up the way for additional Central Massachusetts service — not to mention the pipe dream of extended service to the west of the city.

Because it owns the tracks, CSX controls the right-of-way, the maintenance, the upgrades, just about everything that would enable the state to improve service on the Worcester line. A point of comparison is provided by the state-owned Fitchburg line, the oldest line in the system, which is poised to undergo a massive upgrade with public money that will improve both scheduling and reliability.Asst. Conductor Christina Hannigan of Quincy welcomes passengers aboard.

"CSX is a huge multi-national company," comments Murray. "We're trying to deal in a reasonable, mutually beneficial way. [We're] exploring all the options in a way that enables us to improve existing train service, to expand it without harming their freight."

Murray is purposely vague, as is everyone involved in the negotiations. CSX spokesman Robert Sullivan only gives the obligatory, "We for years have discussed various options for improving freight and commuter service, and those discussions remain open."

The ultimate goal, says Murray, is to acquire the tracks from CSX, but he allows that there are potential stop-gap solutions. "We're trying to find the middle ground. Trying to expand it. I think that's do-able," he says.

That middle ground would not necessarily entail an outright purchase. As we reported in February, gaining MBTA control of signaling and dispatching operations from CSX has long been a sticking point of the ongoing state/CSX conversations.

According to Sullivan, those dispatching operations currently take place from a main CSX center in Selkirk, New York, about 120 miles west of Worcester on I-90. That remote location is symbolic of the larger problem of dealing with a national-scale company, say sources, and precisely why dispatching has become such a big issue. "Massachusetts isn't a priority [to CSX]," says one source.

Essentially, CSX gives priority to its own freight trains on local tracks, and sets standards for allowed time gaps between trains. The result, advocates say, is that the company is not as aggressive as they could be squeezing passenger trains in.

The other justification for gaining state control is that the MBTA already owns the tracks and controls signaling on the rest of the commuter rail lines. It's no coincidence, say critics, that the Worcester/Framingham line has repeatedly been identified as the worst in the system in terms of on-time performance. One 2005 MBTA report listed the Worcester line's on-time performance at an average of 87.81% during the times surveyed, while the system average was 93.62%. In 2006, the Worcester performance was reportedly 86%.

"Signalization improvements, dispatching — those in and of themselves might allow us to reach the goal," says Murray.

The reality

That goal? Says Murray: "Adding another two to four [trains] — that may be something if we get a deal. But we have got to come to an agreement on the different aspects."

It's those two to four trains (two morning, two evening) that Murray, O'Leary and other state and train officials have gone back to repeatedly in the past two years as a likely and possible short-term solution. It's a variation on the old carrot-and-stick scenario: They dangle it as a possibility for riders, while at the same time using it to apply public pressure to CSX; thus far, to no avail.

Meanwhile, for commuters like Silvio Medina, the lack of trains is glaring. "The gap is too big," Medina says, pointing specifically to a 135-minute gap between the 8:16 and the 10:31 weekday morning trains to Boston. "There should be a train at 9:30," he says.

Add more frequent trains, says Medina, and "that creates the habit."

The probability, sources say, is that those "two to four" trains and an improvement in service probably will come within the next couple of years. Already last December, we saw a temporary extension of a Framingham train into Worcester. It quickly went away, but was proof that expansion of service is actually possible within the current context. And the track upgrades that CSX is doing now will supposedly improve train speeds between Worcester and Framingham.

But, the likelihood of 20 trains a day, as many hope for, appears exceedingly unlikely. The cost — $50 million, by some estimates — is simply too high, especially in a political atmosphere where the sexy rail project to talk about is that South Shore line.

The bottom line is that Worcester/Framingham service, as of now, remains infamously behind schedule and intermittent. "If you work in Boston in the in-between hours, you're stuck," says Chandler.

"And the idea of reverse commute? Forget it." o

Training by the numbers

Number of weekday roundtrips between terminuses on all commuter rail lines

• 10 weekday roundtrips between Union Station and South Station

• 20 outbound, 21 inbound (Boston) between Framingham and South Station

• 12 between Rockport and North Station

• 12 between Middleboro/Lakeville and South Station

• 13 between Haverhill and North Station

• 13 between Fitchburg and North Station

• 15 between Providence and South Station

• 15 between Plymouth/Kingston and South Station

• 16 between Needham Heights and South Station

• 16 between Franklin and South Station

• 21 inbound, 22 outbound between Lowell and North Station

• 22 inbound, 21 outbound between Readville/Fairmount and South Station

Source: MBTA

What's the cost?

One of the benefits of the commuter rail, aside from the absent convenience, is a cost benefit compared to driving. But does that benefit exist?

Commuter rail

Daily Roundtrip: $15.50 + $3 parking = $18.50 daily

$18.50/day X 230 work days = $4,255/year

Driving

From route 290 to the South Station exit: 88.8 miles and $6.40 in roundtrip tolls.

88.8 miles/20/mpg = 4.44 gallons.

4.44 gal. X $2.65/gallon = $11.77

$11.77 + $6.40 = $18.17/day (not including parking in Boston)

$18.17/day X 230 work days = $4,179.10/year (again, not including parking)